


Just Silver

by mxmyth



Series: Eternal Winter Campaign [8]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Character Death, Epilogue, Eternal Winter campaign, F/F, Hopeful Ending, it's happy but it's sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23424001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxmyth/pseuds/mxmyth
Summary: There were so many colours now, and she dreamed of so many things.
Relationships: Stormfey - Relationship, Zada/Silver
Series: Eternal Winter Campaign [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636795
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Just Silver

Grey eyes, colourless hair, fair skin marked with scars that had healed to a silvery paleness. When their adventure began Silver had been a blank piece of paper, a meadow blanketed in snow. Inside of her had been the tense silence of a house in which people were afraid to move or make sound. She wore a stoic mask and distanced herself from anything that might elicit strong emotion, lest the sea of grief overtake her again. Even her dreams had been under her control. 

There were so many colours now, and she dreamed of so many things.

There was the gold line on Silver’s palm, a magical scar and a forever reminder of her friend. Cinder, whom she hadn’t been able to save. Cinder, with whom Silver had more in common than the wizard had ever known. Both of them had once been broken, both made into something monstrous. The difference between them was only one act of kindness, one twist that led Silver down a different path. Why should she get to live, to love, when Cinder never had the chance? Some questions don't have answers. She saw Cinder in her dreams, less often as time went on, but they never left her.

She saw them sometimes as they had been in battle, terrifying and unstoppable, illuminated by the incredible blaze of their magic. Sometimes they were as they had been during quiet moments, tucked up somewhere with their spellbook, glowing orange eyes moving across the pages again and again. Sometimes Silver saw them in their last moment, looking up at her and Zada, expression inscrutable and their voice all rage and pain as they cursed the two of them with their final breath.

There were other colours. There was the light blue mark on her forehead from where Amka’s icy magic had brought her back from the brink. It was a symbol of every wrong choice Silver had made up to that point, and of everything she would go on to do to set it right. It slowly faded with time, but that little patch of skin remained ever cool. Blue was the colour of Deria's eyes, too, and of the divine power she came wield in Amka's name. Blue, it seemed, was the colour of second chances.

And red was hot regret. It was all the things you couldn't take back, the colour of the blood Silver saw on her hands until the day she died. The two eyeless humans; the three genasi; the great white dragon. She kept these deaths close and honoured them by learning from them. There were other battles, but they were always in defense of what was good. Violence became her last resort and she was quick to heal whatever needed healing.

But there was also yellow, which was Victoria's favourite colour. It was the colour of the ribbons around the gifts that she and Zada brought on every birthday. It was the colour of the sunflowers that grew in the yard where Zada playfully wrestled the little girl, where Deria picked her up and spun her in circles until they fell down laughing, where Silver summoned fey spirits in the shape of bunnies and fawns and taught Victoria how to treat all living things with gentleness.

They had a second chance with Victoria, and they would do right by the child. Silver ensured that she grew up hearing stories of her older sibling, who had been a very powerful wizard and who would have been so proud of her.

There was the pink in her cheeks, the colour she blushed when Zada pulled her close and whispered in her ear, made her laugh, kissed her so sweetly. There were pink blossoms in her flower crown when her mirror vision came to pass and she and Zada were handfasted by a priestess of Sehanine. There were rose-coloured sunrises and cerise sunsets, each one precious because she spent them with the one she loved.

There was the everlasting, intoxicating green of the feywild, which she had once believed was lost to her forever. But she would return, victorious and welcomed, to present Queen Titania with the once-stolen relic and end her exile. Beneath the great trees of her home she and Zada would walk, hand in hand, as they decided to stay. For a decade they made their home there, wherever they were needed, and when Silver left again it was by her own volition.

There were the warm, earthy tones of the Lionsleaf family home to which Zada would return, proven again and again, her new wife by her side. Zada no longer doubted her place, because she had found it. The proof was in the wood-and-stone pendant that she had made for Silver with her own two hands, in the scars on her brown skin and the new wisdom in her eyes, in the stories of victory and failure alike that she added to the Lionsleaf legacy.

And there was the purple of the gloaming sky, sparkling with stars as she and Zada made camp by moonlight and went to sleep holding each other. They would go on to have many more adventures, always trying to leave things a little better than they found them. Purple were their hard-earned bruises and the shadows under their eyes, but it was also the twilight haze of their shared dreaming. They grew into themselves and their destinies. It wasn't often easy, but they were always together.

With Zada’s help, Silver relearned the gentleness that was once nearly torn out of her. She chose forgiveness and she protected the innocent. When she finally found her sister again, she chose to end the cycle of hurt. She let Bryn live, and she moved on from her past, step by agonizing step. When the shadows moved in, when the grief began to pull her down, when she cracked into pieces, she let Zada call her back. She let those strong hands put her back together, and she found her own strength, too.

And when the adventures were over and the seasons were changing, and she and Zada were faced with an uncertain future, she made her choice. In recognition of all that she and Zada had done in the name of good, she asked her Queen for a boon. It was not the wish she would have once made, because to be made fey would mean an immortal life, and that would mean to lose Zada. Instead, she wished for Zada’s human lifespan to be lengthened to her own.

For so great a gift, Silver would have given much more than was asked of her. But her Queen, ever merciful, had only one condition and it was easily met. She and Zada returned to the Material Plane, to make their home within a quiet sylvan grove and to guard the portal to the Plane of Faerie. The door of their simple house was ocean blue, the walls were green with ivy, the thatched roof was golden, and the wildflowers in the yard bloomed all year. Silver never lacked for colour again.

And she wasn’t empty anymore. Inside of her she carried the family that she had found: Deria, who was like her sister, and Celusindi and little Victoria, and gentle Saffron. Now the windows of her heart were open so sunshine could come in, and there was always music coming from somewhere. Each room in her mind contained memories bright and beautiful, dark and painful. The ghosts she didn’t need were released, and the ones she did she kept close. Blackthorn. Cinder. The Bryn that she had once known.

As the end of her long life neared, Silver knew that, in a way, she had achieved her dream of immortality. She would live on in the memories of those she had loved and in the new generations of druids that she had mentored. She would persist in the marks she left on the world, and in the stories that were told on two planes of existence, of the adventures of The Everstorm and The Silver Light.

Silver no longer feared death. She walked into its peace willingly, hand in hand with the woman who had been the first to love her without condition— Zada, that force of nature, whose warm, bright love had been the first step in bringing the colours back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thus concludes the story of my girl, Just Silver. Eternal Winter was the best campaign I've ever had the privilege of playing in and I think it's changed my life forever.
> 
> Cinder and Saffron belong to Leanne, Deria belongs to Maeve, and Zada belongs to Goldie.
> 
> The world they adventured in, the NPCs they befriended and loved and hated, and everything the party overcame to find their epilogues; that's all thanks to our DM, the lovely Potato.


End file.
